The Speech
by Pawfoot
Summary: With a little help from my friend Redskilstilkskin I give you, The Speech! A rather random oneshot about Sirius and his best man speech. Oh dear...


A/N- A little one-shot I wrote with my good friend Redskilstilskin. Be warned, it is very random. I enjoy poking fun at Sirius...

Note on seating (from left to right): Peter, Sirius, James, Lily, Vanessa, Remus

A note on Vanessa Blair: I have a bunch of stories about her, none of which have made it past the planning stage.Since her character was developed before the sixth book and really hasn't changed much since she has always been Remus's girl. ( I have had a number of explainations as to what happened to her after reading book six. My personal favorite is the vampire one.) Also a mischief maker and first and formost Lily's best friend.

Disclaimer: I own nothing!

It was the moment everyone had been waiting for. No not the wedding, the reception! Oh sure, everyone was all happy that James and Lily got married but everyone loves the reception more!

The babble of talk that had filled the huge room slowly died down as Sirius stood up with a glass in one hand and a fork in the other. Vanessa Blair, more commonly known as Nessa, leaned toward her best friend Lily and murmured wickedly, "How much you wanna best that he's going to break that glass with his fork?" Lily glanced at Sirius while he waited for silence.

"Considering the fact that I think you're absolutely right, I'll bet you a Knut." Lily grinned as Nessa muttered darkly under her breath.

Right on cue Sirius slammed the fork into the glass, and as Nessa and Lily had predicted, shattered it. Any continuing conversation halted immediately. All eyes in the room were fixed on Sirius Black, and quite a few of them looked annoyed.

"Er, right, sorry about that," Sirius said grinning sheepishly.

Nessa held her right hand up expectantly to Lily. "Pay up."

"I don't have any money right now," Lily hissed back. "Why would I have money at my wedding?"

"Fine then but don't think this means you won't have to pay," Nessa muttered.

Their conversation was cut short by Sirius who was showing signs of a person who was about to go on a pointless and long-winded rant.

"Well, seeing as I am the best man, I get to make the best man speech!" Before Sirius could get any farther, Remus could be seen sneakily taking out a book and beginning to read it. Nessa made the traditional palm-to-forehead-Sirius-is-an-idiot gesture, and Lily complaining softly to James, "Why Sirius? You just had to pick him didn't you?"

James was spared having to answer by Sirius as he started his 'speech.'

"Well here we are, Lily and James' wedding," he began. "I don't know about you but I was betting on James and Nessa." At this point James, Lily, Nessa, and Remus were all glaring at him. "I'm joking! Joking! Sort of…Besides, if I had told you during their Hogwarts years that Lily Evans and James Potter were going to get married, you would have given me a look fairly similar to the one most of you are giving me now." Sirius gave them a quickly fading you-gotta-love-this-face smile, then, resignedly, continued with his speech. "Okay, I'll get serious now. Get it? Serious…Sirius?? Okay…James." Sirius grinned at his best mate. "You were always there for me buddy. Through thick and thin, detention after detention, prank after prank. Lily…" Sirius said, turning his attention to her. "I can't believe you married such an idiot-" He was cut off by Remus loudly clearing his throat and his frazzled get-on-with-it gesture.

Sirius stared at his other best mate quizzily, obviously having absolutely no idea why Remus was clearing his throat loudly. A slightly awkward silence ensued as Sirius' not so speedy brain tried to catch up. When it finally did, a look of slowly dawning comprehension side onto his face.

"Ooh!" Sirius said with an I-totally-knew-that face.

"Ah yes!" he exclaimed. "Remus needs a cough drop! Anyone have one hand?" Peter began to raise his hand tentatively but it was quickly slapped down by James. The groom shot a quick glare at Peter before turning his wire-framed hard hazel eyes to stare at Sirius. He tried to convey to the best man with the look, 'Sirius, you're great and all but, please, shut-up!'

Nessa could also be seen trying to wrestle Remus' hidden hardcover book from him. He tried his best to be inconspicuous but only succeeded in loosening his grip slightly. Nessa seized the opportunity to drag the book from his unwilling hands and proceeded to continuously bang the unusually thick book against her head.

"Ooo!," Sirius cooed. "Lookie! Nessa is hitting herself with a book! That's a very _thick_ book. Wonder where she got it from?" He deliberated for a moment while Remus started to slowly shake his head, he was slightly leaning forward and his forehead rested between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.

Sirius pointed into the crowd at an old man. The old man was staring off into space with his mouth hanging slightly open. This old man happened to be Lily's grandfather. "I bet it was him!" Sirius ranted. "He looks like the smartarifical type to have a thick book like that."

Lily stared at James. "Smartarifical!?" she asked him incredulously.

"It's Sirius," James muttered in reply. "What do you expect, scholarly?"

Sirius was apparently determined to make this the Energizer Bunny of speeches; it just kept going and going and going and going. "I bet Nessa is hitting her head because she needs to see a shrink. I've always said she needed a shrink but she doesn't believe me…You know who would make a good shrink? Remus would be a good shrink. All he really needs are those cool glasses and a clipboard."

Everyone at the head table was praying for Sirius to stop, but it was not to be.

"I don't like clipboards. Professor McGonagall had a clipboard once. I got my finger caught in it, and it hurt! Ooo! And then there was this one time when McGonagall's hair got turned blue! She blamed it on me and James and we had to have a lot of detentions with the evil clipboard. 'Cept it wasn't me and James, it was Nessa and Remus!"

"No it wasn't!" Remus said. At the same moment, Nessa said, "So what would you do if it was us?"

"Oh wait," Sirius was apparently thinking very hard. "It was him!"

Once again Sirius was pointing into the crowd. Once again Sirius was pointing at Lily's grandfather, who was actually paying a little more attention this time. Once again Lily was about ready to kill Sirius. However, Professor McGonagall, like Remus had been doing, held her head in one hand as was slowly shaking it back and forth, trying desperately to hide her smile.

Lily's grandfather looked up at Sirius' pointing finger, squinting through his unusually small spectacles. "What chou talkin' 'bout, Willis?" he drawled with a southern American-English accent (doesn't make much sense, does it?).

A man on the other side of the room looked up in confusion at Lily's grandfather's question. The man happened to be Lily's cousin, who happened to be named Willis, and who happened to have relatively the same black hair as Sirius. "What chou talkin' 'bout, Gramps?" Willis asked in the same southern American-English drawl as his grandfather.

"At the same time, Sirius cried out, "My name's not Willis! It's Sirius!"

Lilt eyed the thick book, Nessa was still hitting herself with it, like it was her bestest friend in the whole world. Nessa saw Lily eyeing the novel and turned her head, still hitting herself. "My book," she stated possessively.

"Actually," Remus came in conversationally.

"Shut-up, Remus" Nessa snapped, turning to look at him, still hitting herself.

Lily took the opportunity to snatch the book from Nessa. Grinning in a rather creepy way she began to smack her forehead with it.

"Um, Lily?" James was seriously concerned for the sanity of his new wife. "Where did you get that book?"

"I stole it from Nessa," she replied savagely.

Nessa leaned around her red-haired friend. "I got it from Remus."

"Remus," James asked peering around Lily and Nessa, "why do, er, did you have a book?"

"I had the foresight to realize it might be needed," Remus explained. Looking at Lily smacking herself, he added, "Although this wasn't what I had in mind."

Sirius completely ignored the exchange between his friends and plowed right on through with his speech.

"And then there was 'Mr. Happy.' He was a clown doll Professor McGonagall had. He wasn't happy at all. He was evil! Evil I say!" Sirius stopped again. Today was a very busy day for his very slow brain. "Wait a second, it was Professor Dumbledore! Why? Why did he have such a diabolical clown? And you know what else is diabolical? Pickles! Whatever they use to pickle them in, I guess you could call it pickling juice, it burns your eyes!"

Lily had had enough. Sirius had burnt her last straw. She rose to her feet in a rustle of fine silk and sparkles with the thickly bound book in her gloved hands. Although she tried to be sneakily silent, the heels of her shoes clacked loudly. Luckily Sirius was too lost in his own little world to notice.

"I believe that happened during an ill-conceived prank involving pickles and Professor Flitwick." THWACK! "That's all folks!" Sirius mumbled. "I'll be here all…night…" THWUMP! He collapsed.

Standing behind him, book still raised, Lily grinned triumphantly as the crowd cheered.

"Thank you, thank you," Lily said sweetly to the crowd as she clacked over to Remus. She plopped the book in front of him. "Thank you, Remus, for allowing me the pleasure of using this lovely book of yours."

As she swept herself back to her chair beside James, Remus muttered to himself, "You're very welcome."

A/N- Wow, Redskilstilskin, that was almost Lily/Remus right there. Reviews are much loved, but please, please, please don't give me too much about spelling or grammer. I try, really, but it have never been my forte. And now some words from Redskilstilskin.

Redskilstiltskin: Hello all! As Pawfoot said, this is the product of total insanity mixed with sugar. Pretty nice result, don't you think? Anyway, the cough drop thing was mine, not that it really matters. Just thought I'd slip that in here Uhh...I love Sirius to death and all but he's just so easy to make fun of! Hope you enjoyed The Speech! Read and Review:D


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